So, 13 years ago there was this reasonably popular anime series called Trigun, featuring a likable fanatic called Vash the Stampede. The series revolved around people shooting, screaming, and yelling every time Vash showed up, but his big secret was that he was a pacifist who used his uncanny skill with a handgun to mainly disarm Bad Guys. Despite the huge damages that occurred while he was in town, it wasn't really his fault - Vash was actually trying to stop the violence.

Mind you, the Bad Guys quickly figured out what Vash was about within five minutes of meeting him, and most quickly dismissed him as a harmless nut once they determined Vash wasn't going to try stop them in any meaningful way. Vash also paid for his dedication - in one episode of the TV series, we see Vash without his long red duster, and see his horribly scarred body. Vash never learned, and his approach to the Bad Guys was always to walk up to them and ask please don't kill anyone. In the series, at least, there was an end-point to his madness, and that was when he found his evil counterpart.

So, what do I do when I find a sequel 13 years later, that's the same as the TV series, more or less? The movie has more plot - the story actually has to do with an incident from Vash's past. A Bad Guy that Vash saved from execution (from his own gang, and probably from the law) is coming back, and Vash is being asked the question, "Wouldn't it have been better if this Bad Guy had been killed years ago?" There's some other characters involved, people from the TV series who get more or less ignored as the story passes them by, but the real question is how Vash is going to make it right this time.

(SPOILER) If you liked the TV series, you'll like the movie. It's more of the same, but, except for Wolfwood, the old supporting cast gets short shrift. For everyone else, this is NOT a thinking-persons' movie. If you like Westerns - and this SF feature is set on a planet with Old West trappings - that lasts all of five minutes before the setting morphs to Europe or the last Rambo gun-fest. If you like philosophic treatises on the place of violence within a lawful society... this is not that movie either, since we find out that one mercenary-girl born makes up for all people killed from a Bad Guy that Vash saved. And we know that not because we actually see that girl, like, curing cancer or creating world peace, but because she looks Vash in the eye when she leaves. Yeah. You think I'm kidding, don't you? (/SPOILER)

I think the best way to watch the movie is to regard it like spending time with an old relative who's starting to lose it. They're still the same person you remember from when you were a kid, and they've got the same moves and mannerisms, but now that you're older you find that some things aren't making sense, and the jokes are getting old. If you can overlook these issues, then you're gold and the movie will be comic action-adventure heaven. DOUGHNUTS! EXPLOSIONS! GUNFIRE! (Hey! What happened to Millie?) If you actually start wondering why things in Trigun work as they do, well, you need a different movie.